[kgun12]

As an air traffic control who works 9 weekend in a row to get one off, who has worked 28 out of 33 Christmases and most other holidays, birthdays and anniversaries, I have no sympathy. (BTW remember that the next time you fly, haha!) HOWEVER when your use to getting these days off I can see where it would make you mad. Like Embree Smith said sounds like you need to just suck it up.

 

[kgun12]

Well kudos to you, With the money you make, you should be able to retire by age 40 and there with be your vacation.

Well you are sort of right, the old you make lots of money statement! We do make good money, but here's the catch. Even if you love this job like I do it still sucks! It is always in the top 5 to 10 most stressful job. With that stress come many stress related illnesses (too many to list), divorce, high rate of Alcoholism, hearing loss mainly in one ear cause that's the one we wear the ear piece in, we rotate shifts weekly so we never get in a good sleep pattern. ie 4 shifts of 6 am to 2 pm, 1 or 2 days off then 4-5 shifts of 2 pm to 10 pm,1 or 2 days off, every 7 weeks 4 or 5 1030 pm to 630 am sometimes we have to go from a 2-10 shift back to a 6-2 shift the next day.

It is one of the few jobs with age limits (again a stress relate job thing) you can't become a controller after age 31 and you have to retire at 56, we can retire at anypoint when we get 25 years in or anytime after age 50 as long as we get 20 years in at 34% of our base pay (this % goes up with more years). Doesn't matter how many planes there are you can't say; stop I have too many. They are run on gas and it runs out, we have to get them on the groun, we save and or protect more lives than any other profession.

We pretty much only see things in black and white, not many gray areas in our world, we follow strict rules every hour of every day we work. This follows us into our private lives, hence the high rate of divorce.

We don't have a normal or even a good social life, why, because we don't ever get the same days off, very few weekends(which is when most folks have their parties and gathering. After so many times of saying no I have to work or can't make it I have to work, people just stop asking you. It's not that they don't believe you and we still have a good time if all the moons aline, it just doesn't happen that often!

This job effect our personal lives in way you can't understand, we can't bring the job home, the wife doesn't understand when you start talking about the pilot missing the vector or starting his turn late or having to work short because there is no overtime available. We have dreams about crashing planes together, we wake up in the middle of controlling airplanes in bad WX. Try explaining that when you woke the wife up.

Some places it's not so bad, like Rochester NOW. When I first got here we were the 87th busiest facility in the country, with one of the most difficult runway setup. We now run about a 1/3 less traffic. I was also stationed at Eglin AFB for 5 years, this was the busiest air traffic facility in the air force.

Yes we make good money, but with the lack of sleep, medical problems, a limited social life, looking the wife and kids in the eye on most holidays while I say good bye or the kids not having dad there on their B-day or the wife putting a little something extra in my lunch for our anniversary, after 33 years I'm not sure it has all been worth it, money isn't everything.

 

[kgun12]

This was not a question of working on a holiday when that is normally part of the job as with public service or livestock care. It's a matter of working for a small manufacturer where no necessity exists to work a scheduled holiday. It's just being done on the whim of the owner. That's their right I understand, but people make commitments for holidays to volunteer work for service clubs, take their children for the day, be with family. Announcing this change of day off, choosing to ignore a traditional date, just two weeks prior to the event, without asking any worker's opinion, is inherently unfair.
Brought about by most likely other workers trying to get the following Friday off to stretch it into a four day weekend. Management's solution was to make everyone work on the Independence Day holiday as a way of being non confrontational. For some employees it effects and inconveniences double the people outside the business than the the number of workers the business has.

As said above, it sucks.

Like I said in my first response "HOWEVER when your use to getting these days off I can see where it would make you mad" It does suck!

To look at the bright side, does having to work the holiday mean your company is taking more orders and getting bigger and stronger? If that's the cast it's a good thing!